Sweet Dreams

As you may remember, we have had some difficulties and challenges in getting our youngest child to comply with our bedtime routines.

After we finally resorted to locking him in his room at bedtime last summer we had several months of good sleep. No, it's not inhumane. It helps him learn how to exercise self control. And it helps us not get furious.

Then just before the holidays last year he starting 'popping' again. Not at bedtime, since we were still keeping his door closed when he was putting himself to sleep. But this was now happening in the middle of the night. When we check on him before we go to bed we unlock his door and leave it cracked open. Which apparently became an invitation to come visit us at 2am. Or 3am. Or 5am. Or all of them.

Somehow we put up with this behavior for way too long. The holidays were busy...we didn't want to deal with middle of the night battles...we figured he'd outgrow it eventually. We had a lot of excuses.

Finally my husband took a trip out of town in February and I saw an opening. Since he was the one always getting up in the middle of the night to put our son back to bed, I decided this was an opportunity ripe for change.

And bribery.

So I busted out my party treasure chest full of two cent toys and told my child that he could pick a toy in the morning if he stayed in bed all night. And it worked. Well by the third night it was working.

And then we went back to square one after my husband got back. Not that it was his fault. But I had really been talking up the treasure chest when I was putting him down at night, and when my husband got back and put him to bed, which he often does, he wasn't building up the expectations quite so much. We were back to our nighttime visitor for a couple nights.

So I upped the ante. I wrapped up a bunch of little toys, some of them matchbox cars and others just junk toys, and I put them in a gift bag. I showed it to my son and told him he gets to pick a present out in the morning if he stays in bed all night. And I also set an alarm in his room and told him that he had to stay in bed until the music was playing. This last part didn't stick quite as well as the all night part. But not being woken up - at all - until 6:20am has it's benefits.

Voila. We were back to our peaceful nights.

Ah, what bliss. A full night of sleep.

And a pat on the back.

Although truth be told it took me another week before I could sleep past 5:30am which had become one of his more popular visiting hours.

The funny thing was that he didn't even like the presents after he picked them out in the morning. He'd open one up and whine about it. So then I let him pick one that was a car and he was a little happier. For a few mornings he picked out two toys, one a car and the other a trinket. And he'd complain every time. Even about the car. But we'd stick to the one he got and bring it with us downstairs. After his morning chocolate milk fix he'd warm up to it.

We only had to do this for about 4 or 5 days until he started forgetting about it. We brought the grab bag downstairs because I thought perhaps it was too dark in our room to see what he got and that's why he was complaining.

I was clearly giving him too much credit.

But moving things downstairs was the first step down in the process. Eventually we'd forget to pick one out and he wouldn't remind us.

Another pat on the back for us.

We were so proud of ourselves that we started to take on another challenge. I started leaving the door open a bit at bedtime. We did this when he was sharing a room with his cousin in Colorado and he did really well. So I transferred it home and it continued to go well.

Until this past week. He started his repetitive 'popping' again so we went to the 3 strikes rule. After 3 pop outs we would close the door and lock it. Most nights the threat was enough to keep him to only 2 tries.

Of course when I told this to our new 15 year old babysitter on her first night putting him to bed a week ago, she seemed okay with the process. But when push comes to shove she wasn't ready to be the bad guy. We came home at 10pm to find him still up, having challenged her for 2 hours of popping out of bed. And when we found him, he had a special surprise in store as he had each hand full of gumballs, as well as one in his mouth, and a blue smudged face. And no diaper. Which is still required for night time.

No, we didn't fire the babysitter. But we did offer a lot of education. The next babysitter bedtime went much more smoothly.

And then we hit daylight savings and we even have him sleeping past 7am in the morning.

Woo hoo!!!

And another pat on our backs.

Except just when we think we have all of our bases covered, our son has decided to level the playing field.

What's the one thing he can control when we've taken away all his other options?

That damned diaper.

Even though my husband and I have decided we aren't ready to take on the challenge of bedtime without diapers yet, our son doesn't feel the same way.

I thought it was strange that the sitter didn't put a diaper on him that night last week. When actually he had taken it off himself during all of his little shenanigans. And for the past few nights, he's decided that he's going to get up at some point and let us know that he wants it off. Last night he just took it off himself at 3am and then came in to tell us that he took it off.

You might think this is a great step forward toward getting rid of it all together. But we don't.

At 3am we really don't want to hear about the diaper. We just want it to be on his ass and we want said ass to be in his bed.

And we certainly do not want to be up at night taking him to the potty or changing sheets.

Now tonight I was back to offering him a present - to which he requested a car - if he slept in bed all night, and didn't take off his diaper.

I'm off to go find all those cars he's collected and strewn about the house. I need to wrap a few of them up for a morning "surprise".

What? He's just going to complain about them anyway.

If he's going to find a work-around, then I will too.

A Million Bucks

Alas, another installment in the School of Mom. Sorry to keep my public waiting. Things are picking up for my business and we are leaving on vacation tomorrow. And, oh yeah, I take care of 3 kids. Enough said.

Here's on an update on our game of Sleep Survivor with our son, which has taken on some twists and turns. In the end, it's just about a sure bet that I'll be taking home the million dollars.

I wish.

At the very least I'm starting to feel like a million bucks again, now that we have some peace and quiet at night. But it didn't come easy.

The very same night that I posted that last entry about outwitting our son, he turned around and outplayed me. Here I was all smug and patting myself on the back for being "on to something" by skipping his naps and it all back-fired. He was up just about the entire night that night. We went through about 4 rounds of "go back to bed" all throughout the night. Each one lasted over 30 minutes, and I was the one handling most of it (per my insistence that I would win this thing and finally make him see the light) until my husband took over and got up with him in the wee hours of the sunrise. Needless to say, I only felt like about two cents that next day.

In fact my son and I were both a wreck. I was beside myself feeling like I had failed at every attempt so far. Never having experienced anything like this with our daughters, I finally turned to the internet. Most of the advice I came across was similar to what I was doing. The GBTB (Go Back To Bed) approach that I was so familiar with over the past 3 months. Everyone said you should be stoic and strong, and show no emotion. Are you kidding me!? At 4 in the morning when I've barely slept yet I'm really leaning more toward seriously pissed off than stoic.

Then I came across one article that said the same things, but then acknowledged that toddlers often don't have control over their actions. They are impulsive and can't contain themselves. It said don't confuse their comprehension with their ability to control themselves. While I knew this to be true, I never really applied it to our game of Sleep Survivor. And then it all clicked. You know how you just know when something is the right answer? Well that's what happened.

The article went on to say that you should consider putting one of those tents on the crib. Or put a safety gate at their door, so they can't get out of their room. While I had thought about these options before, and people had recommended it to me, I really just thought that he would learn over time by what we were doing. But clearly it wasn't happening fast enough. If at all.

However we weren't really wanting to go back to the crib. And we knew that he would just crawl right over one of those gates. So we went with the only option we knew. Switching out the doorknob for one that he couldn't open. We have those annoying door handles in our house that are like levers, and they are very easy for toddlers to use; especially to get out the front door.

Since I knew he needed a nap that day and I had no patience to deal with his crankiness, and no new doorknob yet, I decided I would just hold the handle and see what happened. At first he cried for a minute, then he went down to the floor and looked out through the crack. He could see my feet moving around and whenever he quieted down and I would walk away, he'd get up and come out of the room. So I finally put a chair there and put my feet up while I held the door shut. This maneuver proved to outwit him and after a few minutes he fell asleep at the door on the carpet and took a 2 hour nap there.

During all of this I remembered that we did this with our oldest back when she was 2 years old. She spent a week or two falling asleep at the door until she finally started going to sleep in her bed. Yet another lesson that had somehow slipped through the cracks of my mush brain.

I think I was just reluctant to use this method again, seeing as it seems sort of cruel. But it makes sense. And in the end, it's what has worked to give us all a good night's sleep.

That first night with the new doorknob he cried for less than a minute, then went to the floor and started calling "Daaaaady" over and over again. Until about a minute later when he quieted down and fell asleep at the door.

This is how it goes most nights. Occassionally he puts in there a "Mooooomy" and at times he even calls for his sisters. Thankfully it was a very pleasant voice and one we can easily overlook. Every night around 10pm my husband goes in and moves him to his bed. Those first few nights we wouldn't hear a peep from him again until around 5am, when he'd call out again, but then go back to sleep at the door until 6am when my husband would get up with him. And so it went for the first week.

Although we did have a hiccup in there a few nights into it when we went away for the weekend. The first night away he was up again all during the night. My husband ended up sleeping next to him for part of the night. But the second night he slept in his bed (after we put him back) all through the night until 6am. One step back, but two steps forward.

When we returned home, he started going to the door as usual, but then he would go back to bed and go to sleep. We even had one night when he didn't go to the door at all. But then he was back at the door a couple more nights after that, with us moving him to bed again. But every day he has been sleeping all night until after 6am without a peek out from under the door. Most mornings he even sleeps until 6:30am! That lazy boy.

And the kicker here is that he's still napping every day. Most days we are out and about and he falls asleep while in the stroller or car. But if we aren't out, I put him down for a nap at home. And he'll just go to sleep in bed without even coming to the door.

This, combined with the fact that he's in his room at 8pm every night, means that we are all getting more rest in this house.

And last night when my husband put him in his bed he once again didn't go to the door. He was sleeping nice and snug in his bed when he went to check on him.

We are definitely on to something now.

And I don't care if he's a teenager before he figures out how to use that doorknob.

As long as we are all sleeping happily ever after again.

Outwit. Outlast. Outplay.

We have been playing a little bit of "Sleep Survivor" around my house this past week. There have been experiments and challenges that keep us all on our toes vying for the power in the family. And it's all centered around getting our son to sleep in his "big boy bed".

As I've mentioned before, he was getting out of his crib for the past couple of months. So we figured if we are going to go through all this rigmarole, why not just get the big bed and get all this over with. And I'll admit that in the back of my mind I thought, who knows...maybe it will be better if he has a big bed.

Nope.

We started this process just after my last post, so I'll try to sum up the past 10 days of sleep angst in the most succinct way possible.

Basically, he didn't want to fall asleep on his own in the bed. He needed to be lulled, rocked, sang to, back-rubbed, magic spelled upon - whatever we could do to get him sleepy enough to put him down in the bed so he wouldn't get back up. If we didn't, we were in for an hour or two of the same looping roller coaster over and over and over again. And I like roller coasters. But this was enough to make me want to scream after 20 minutes.

So we took the easy way out. At the time it seemed like the only sensible option.

Now how many times have we said that to ourselves?

Turns out we have created a monster. Now I feel I need to preface this all by mentioning that we never had that many problems with our girls. My oldest fought the big bed for a week or two, but after our consistent "go back to bed" talk she gave in to our wisdom. And our younger daughter never even fought it. It was a non-event.

Nowadays, we just don't have the energy or time to do all head-to-head combat that we did with our oldest. Or so we thought. Now we are paying the price. Not only would he not go to sleep without us cuddling him into his slumber, he started waking up during the night and coming to get us. Twice each night.

Ugh. Now we were in a pickle.

He was so tired during the day after all his nighttime shenanigans that he started taking long naps. After a few days of this he was all ass-backwards with his sleep. He wasn't going to sleep at night until 9 or 9:15p, only to get up some time between midnight and 2am, and again around 4 or 5am, and then finally he was up for good at 6am. And then he'd take a 3 hour nap during the day.

Now I can't be positive since I've been so sleep deprived lately, but I'm pretty sure this a HUGE step backward in our sleep regimen. It's like we have a 3 month old again. And this boy has been sleeping through the night for almost 2 straight years with nary a peep.

Again with the Ugh.

After a tryst at 2am that lasted until 3:30am with both my husband and myself up trying to figure out what the hell we had done wrong to create this situation, I knew that something needed to change.

I started doing the math and figured out that he was sleeping about 11 to 12 hours every day. Which the doctor assured me at his 2 year well-check was perfectly normal. And she also happened to mention that he'd probably give up his nap sooner than his sisters, since boys usually give it up sooner than boys.

That was the only green light I needed to decide that we would once again forge ahead and start going without naps. Why not go back to the crib? Why not go back to the head-to-head combat and the nauseating "go back to bed" cycle? Because I am trying to outwit this little dude. Or at the very least outplay him.

My reasoning was that he would be so tired if he didn't take one that we could put him down around 7:30p and he would be way easier to get to sleep. And we wouldn't be dorking around with him until 9 at night. And hopefully he'd be so tired that he would sleep through the night again.

Now the moment of truth. You are all wondering, did that stroke of genius work? Or was she just so desperate that she tried something really stupid and she'll be voted out of her family?

So far, so good. Of course the first day we tried to skip the nap, on Sunday, he fell asleep in his car seat at 3pm before we even pulled out of the parking space we were in. We let him sleep an hour that day. Then on Monday he went without a nap. Monday night he went to bed at 7:30p and was, unfortunately, up at 2am. But just that once, so that was an improvement.

Yesterday he had another short snooze, but was easy to put down by 8pm, and stayed asleep until 4am. A marked improvement! Except he was up again at 5am, and then 6am for good. Once again, Ugh.

But I think we might be on to something. I think we will be able to outlast him at this point, since we have outwitted him for a few nights now and we can finally have the 8 to 9pm hour back to ourselves again.

Now on a related note, sadly, our younger daughter has gotten in the mix the past couple nights. When we had that ugly session I mentioned that lasted an hour and a half the other night, he was crying so much with us trying to put him back to bed over and over that she woke up and started crying too. Then this seemed to have reset her sleep cycle, and the past 2 nights she has been up at 2am. She wakes up, looks around, and then claims "it's too dark!".

Well duh. It's nighttime. But that bit of outwitting doesn't really work on a 4 year old in the middle of the night.

So last night I had a pep talk with her, which usually works when she goes into these cycles. I am determined to outwit her as well, and get some damn sleep around here.

It seems it hit home a bit, since she started talking to her sister this time when she woke up. She was complaining to her, hoping that her woes could still be heard, but that she wouldn't wake up my husband or myself as she had promised.

One point for her in the outwit department. She is a worthy adversary.

But I will not be outplayed and I will definitely outlast.

Things That Go Bump In The Night

Lately we've been having a lot of bumps in the night.  As I mentioned not long ago, our son has figured out how to get out of the crib by himself.  And he helps himself to this lovely exercise every night at bedtime.  We are now going into our 3rd week of this, and it's finally getting better.  And no, we haven't gotten a big boy bed yet.  And yes, we probably should.  But he's our third child, and so far he hasn't injured himself, so we are feeling pretty good about it all.

The tell-tale sign of how much his bedtime routine is getting better is how many loud thumps you hear in a single sitting.  It used to be 6 or 7 or more.  And it would go on for an hour.  A lot of those sessions were peppered with "Daaaaddy" and pleas for more time with his idol.  And the more daddy got involved in the process, the longer it all seemed to go on.  

So I put an end to that pretty fast.  Call me a spoil-sport, but it was getting a little ridiculous.  My husband would get so annoyed by it all that he'd resort to some crazy tactics.  Although one of them turned out to not be so crazy.  

It seems that taking his favorite snuggly animal away got our son to listen up a little.  Yes, it seems a little cruel.  But it worked for my husband, and I've gotten it to work for me too. 

Now this week my husband has been out of town and I have things running like a tired rusty squeaky well-oiled machine.

I put him in his bed, tell him to stay there, and I leave.  I wait outside and if I hear him stand up I look in and say "lie down".  If he doesn't lie down, I come in and take away his doggy, and go back outside.  After he's been able to lie down in his crib for a few minutes without standing up, I go in and give it back.  And we do it all over again if he stands up again, or if he gets out before I can catch him.  Tonight, after only 2 escapes, he settled down and went to sleep.  Not bad considering I wasn't patrolling his room very well.  The other night it was only once.  A record!

Nap time has gotten better too.  It's never been as bad as bedtime, but today he just went right down and never even bothered to take a second look at the door.  Sweet.

Now the only other hitch in this is that at times he's been getting up during the night.  And he doesn't hesitate to just thump his way out of bed.  It's rather startling to be woken up by the sound of your child basically jumping out of his crib.  

And you add to that the weird energy that we've had in the house around midnight, and you get some more bumps in the night.  For the last several nights, the kids have all taken turns getting up around 12:15am.  The first night it was my younger daughter, complaining that it was too dark or some other asinine thing like that.  Too dark?  It's the middle of the goddamned night.  Of course it's too dark!  And of course she had to tell me this on 3 separate occasions over the next half hour.  Then, at 2:30a that night, there was a bump in the night.  Jailbird was stretching his wings and it took 2 times to get him back in bed for good.

The next night my son was randomly out of his crib close to midnight.  With barely a peep he escaped, but I only had to put him back one time.

Then last night I figure maybe, just maybe, it will be a quiet night.  Sure enough, my younger daughter and my son were quiet all night.  But, go figure, my oldest got up to go to the bathroom at 12:15am.  Now normally I might not have stirred too much when she gets up, which is very rarely.  But these days we have so many bumps in the night that require my more or less immediate attention.  So I sprang out of bed at the first sounds, only to see my son's door still closed and to hear the little tinkle from the bathroom.

Great.  I'm up even when I don't have to be!  So be it.

Now here's the kicker for all of this sleeping madness.  Around the same time that my son started escaping from the crib, he also started getting up around 5:45a or 6am.  Oy!  Who the hell wants to be up at 5:45am other than the girl that delivers our newspaper?  And for a non-morning person, that's like getting up in the middle of the night.

For the past few weeks my husband has been taking the morning shift, as usual.  We have tried putting my son back in his crib, but it's usually useless.  You end up just getting way too much exercise for that time of morning.  What's also usually useless is me going back to sleep.  But at least I get a few quiet minutes in a warm bed before I have to face the world.

This morning stuff was the thing I was dreading when I knew my husband was going out of town.  Sure enough, after that night when my daughter had me up at midnight (right after I'd gone to bed, by the way), and then my son had me up at 2:30am, there he was, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at 5:45am.

Enough is enough.

I tried putting him back in, over and over, until about 6:15am, and then I gave up.  

The next morning I tried to have a more positive attitude, and while I was putting him back in at almost 6am, I did the take-away-his-favorite-stuffed-animal-the-only-piece-of-security-he-has-in-the-crib-we-are-cruel-parents trick.  And it worked for a bit.  Then I told him, after I gave it back, stay here and wait for mommy to come back.  And just like sleep-training in reverse, I came back after a few minutes and said "good job", and then again after 5 minutes, and then again after 10 minutes.  And then I called it a morning and got up with him at 6:30am.

Are you tired yet?

Well here's the good news.  Last night I put him to bed and after not too much fuss, he was out at 8:15pm.  Which I have decided needs to be his new bedtime, since he's clearly getting enough sleep that he can wake up before the roosters.  And had I closed his curtains real tight to keep out the morning light.  And I had turned his humidifier down to a lower setting so it wasn't quite so loud (good for drowning out our night time noise with the girls when he's trying to go to sleep, but I've noticed it seems awfully loud during our middle of the night tea parties).  And I hoped that our morning lesson had struck a bit of a chord.

And this morning he slept until 6:45am.  Whaaaaat?!  

Not only that, he didn't make a thump when he got out of bed.  He managed to get out quietly, then walk over to our door.  At that point he usually starts saying "daaaaaadddy" much too loud for everyone else in the house.  But this morning he didn't do that.  He just stood quietly right by our door until I came over to get him.

And that's when I'm pretty sure I heard angels singing.

Now the question is, what worked?  Was it the morning before?  Was it the curtains?  The humidifier?  I have no idea, but I'm repeating it all again and we'll see what happens.

The saddest part of this whole thing is that I am absolutely ecstatic that I got to sleep in until 6:45am this morning.